A Look At Perinton's Former Tops

As you may recall, the Perinton Tops was briefly mentioned in my post about the Perinton Square Mall since it served as an anchor to the shopping mall. Since that post, however; Tops has closed its doors as one of ten stores to get axed during last year's bankruptcy for the company. I've have since learned, thanks a blog reader comment, that this was previously a Kmart store before being Tops. Kmart would relocate to Victor in the 1990s.  

I visited this location once during normal operations and I also managed to visit here during its final weeks of operation. This location was briefly used a prototype store under the Martin's banner (when Tops was still a part of Ahold) and was downsized during that time which led to Tops only having one entrance once it converted back.

Left entrance walled up

Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls

The main entrance in the 2014 expansion area

While technically considered to be an outlet shopping center, the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls is technically a mall since it has corridors and a roof above them. For the sake of this article, I will be referring to the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls as a mall. One key thing that does distinguish this from a mall is that it really doesn't have anchors. However, it does kind of have junior anchors in Saks off 5th, Marshalls and at last check a soon-to-close Forever 21. Of course the fact remains that most of the stores in the mall are factory and/or outlet branded stores.

The mall opened in 1982 on the site of a former Kings department store, much smaller than its size today. It underwent two expansions, the first of which nearly doubled it size. Saks Off 5th was added as part of this expansion in 1994, but evidently they would wind up relocating as part of the second expansion. The second expansion occurred in 2014 by taking over a trailer park and gave the mall over 800,000 sq. ft. of retail use.

Although not part of the Fashion Outlets, the property to the south was developed into retail use as well. A relocated Walmart served as the catalyst for the further development. You'll notice this as we take a look at some Google Earth historic satellite views:

The Fashion Outlets as seen in 1995

The Fashion Outlets as seen in 2002.

The Fashion Outlets as seen in 2005. You can begin to see the development of the Walmart and center to the south.

The Fashion Outlets and Walmart retail center as seen in 2010.

The Fashion Outlets and Walmart retail center as seen in 2014. The new expansion of the mall is underway.

The Fashion Outlets and Walmart retail center as seen in 2018. Notice Google still recognizes the former trailer park streets.

So with that in mind, we shall begin the photo tour:

Now for the inside:

Google Earth historic satellite views courtesy of Google Earth.